


The Heir of Slytherin

by WhyWhyNot



Series: Sins of the Mother [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Blanket Permission, Child Sexual Abuse, Dark Magic, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-07-23 21:14:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 3,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16167116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhyWhyNot/pseuds/WhyWhyNot
Summary: There is Something Dark at Hogwarts. Something Wrong, and something crawling in the walls. Some students hear voices, other are turned to stone.It would be easier if the Dead Girl stopped sending letters.It would be easier if some monsters didn't have shiny smiles and pretty human faces.~ First chapter edited october 4th~~ Inversion order chapters 3 and 4 october 14th~





	1. Friends

Wynstella is hiding in the bathroom.

She doesn't want to be found. Not by The Weasley, not by the Bright Witch, not by Kedavra, and especially not by Lee.

She wants to be left alone. 

(She doesn't, she really doesn't.)

It's better this way.

(It hurts. It hurts more than she could ever imagine.)

They're safer this way.

(She angrily throws in the back of her mind the picture of two black eyes, empty and unseeing.)

She knows exactly what to say to make them leave.

\---

Kedavra and The Weasley are not at the Feast.

The Bright Witch looks worried. So does Lee, but her faces lights up when she sees Wynstella, and she waves happily. Wynstella pointedly ignores her.

(It's better this way.)

Everything smells like meat and candies, the hundreds of children around her make her skin sticky, and she feels the taste of sickness in the back of her throat.

She shakes her head to clear her mind. It's not Dark Magic. Just the smells of the Feast reminding her of

(Ami)

bad things.

Still. She doesn't manage to take a single bite.


	2. The Liar

In the morning, Lee and the Gryffindor Three manage to corner her. They're happy, but a bit worried.

Wynstella shows nothing but disdain, and spits all the pureblood nonsense she's been fed since birth.

Mudblood. Freak. Should not exist. Should not be here.

Should be dead.

(She ignores Amira's smile and Ami's eyes creeping in the back of her mind. She had plenty of practice this summer.)

Granger has to hold back The Weasley. Lee slaps her.

Wynstella doesn't cry.

(She had plenty of practice for that, too.)

It's better this way.

(It hurts.)

\---

Wynstella keeps with the lie. She hangs out with Draco and the bloodpurists, and either ignores the muggleborns or sneers at them, and smiles and laughs and snarls and throws looks of disdain in all the right moments.

It hurts. 

(It doesn't hurt all the time, through. Sometimes, she just feels empty, like she's just as dead as Amy)

(It's worse.)

Every fake smile feels like razors in Wynstella's mouth. She ignores it and forces herself to laught to Draco's jokes.

(Her heart feels like a snake is eating it from the inside. She can't ignore it.)

(It doesn't matter)

It's better this way.


	3. The Players

Samain comes, and Wynstella still can barely force herself to swallow eggs and vegetables. Sweets and meat still bring the memories of a grinning corpse.

The Great Hall still feels like Dark Magic.

The feeling is lighter tonight, through, and Wynstella allows herself a spark of hope. Maybe she's beginning to get better.

(She could almost enjoy the Feast, if she could just ignore Draco's cruel, ignorant jokes and the ravenous beast devouring her heart.)

Whatever respite the Feast may have brought disappears when she sees the words on the wall.

The feeling wasn't just bad memories. There is something Dark at Hogwarts, and its leading the game.

Draco's words echo in her head. Lee, Granger...

Wynstella suddenly feels very calm.

Two can play this game, after all, and she learnt from the best.


	4. The Parseltongue

Lakshmi Suresh is a tiny muggleborn firsty, and a ravenclaw with a somewhat mean temper.

Wynstella walked on her hissing to a snake hidden under robes. The snake was hissing back.

She talks to snakes, but she's not the Heir. She's not Dark.

Wynstella waits until they're both alone to corner her in an empty corridor. She tells the girl to be careful, not to let anyone else see the snake, to contact her if necessary, but discretly, and only for emergencies. 

She didn't except the girl to tell her that Lockhart touched her.

They can't tell a teacher. Lockhart is a rich and famous pureblood. Lakshmi is a muggleborn with something to hide. She wouldn't stand a chance.

So. Priorities. Everybody is looking for the Heir, but only Lakshmi and Wynstella know about Lockhart.

Nevermind the Heir and his Dark Magic. She has another monster to take down, and this one has a bright smile in a pretty face.


	5. Monsters

Secret brewing in Hogwarts is easier than it should be. All Wynstella has to do is to hide in a weird room, which only appears when you walk thrice in front of the door, but is filled with everything you need. 

Well. Not the potion ingredients. But it's fine, because everything Wynstella needs, she can get with minimum sneaking, and the potion itself is pretty easy to brew. There is a reason Wynstella is the best of her year at potions. Even better than Granger.

Slipping the doses in Lockhart's food is harder, but she manages. She can break into his office, and mix them with his beauty potions. Her concotion is specially made so it won't do anything weird when put in another potion. It's supposed to be indetectable.

It would be more fun with Lee and Granger. And Merlin, thinking about Granger shouldn't hurt. They were only on speaking terms for two weeks months ago.

(It hurts nonetheless)

It will take a few months more before Wynstella's plan fully takes effect, but Lockhart is already nothing more than a dead man walking.

(She just hopes that when he finally stops walking, she won't be there to see his empty eyes.)

\---

Lockhart vanished Kedavra's bones, and Wynstella wishes the Lilith's draught took effect faster.

\---

A first year boy is turned to stone, and Wynstella is bitterly reminded that adults are incompetent, and that she's left to fight two monsters at once.


	6. Shanks I

Lockhart organizes a club, and Snape is there, so it's probably safer than his classes. But still. Neither Wynstella nor Lakshmi go.

That's how they miss the great reveal.

The Boy Who Lived is a Parselmouth.

Which is unexpected, but doesn't mean he's the Heir. The Dark in Kedavra is asleep, buried too deep to do anything.

Wynstella can't help him, but it doesn't matter. He has The Weasley, and Granger, and even Lee. He'll be fine.

(She doesn't. She probably won't. She tries to ignore it.)

Wynstella only has Lakshmi, and she shouldn't. It's dangerous, for both of them. But it's too late to back down now. They're tied to each other by shared secrets and plots, by shared masks, lies, and hidden truths, linked by something that could as well make them best friends and sworn ennemies.

(She was best friends with Lee, before, but she's pretty sure they're not anymore. They didn't have any positive interaction since the first day of school.)

(It shouldn't hurt that much.)

(It does anyway.)

Wynstella only has Lakshmi, and then she also has Shanks.

\---

She found Shanks in the park, cawing helplessly, and took him to the groundkeeper to heal him. Hagrid is really helpfull, showing her how to help, and she carefully keeps everything she learns in a corner of her head.

But no matter what Hagrid does, a crow can't fly with a missing wing.

So she keeps him, and she calls him Shanks, and she wonders if someone will see the stump on his right side and get it.

(She wonders if she will ever know the end of the story.)

(And if some make fun of her for having a broken pet, well...)

(She is not exactly undamaged herself.)


	7. Suspects

Time goes flying, and the Heir makes more and more victims, and Wynstella's inquiries didn't get her any closer of the truth. Even Lakshmi's careful spying of the Gryffindor Three only gave her informations about what happened to Hagrid.

(Who would even think that Hagrid is the Heir?)

(She's not surprised he got arrested, though. She trusts Fudge to do what will make him look good far more than she trusts him to actually do his job.)

Time goes flying until Wynstella meets the one they call Ginny Weasley. 

\---

Wynstella is fairly sure that the true Ginny Weasley is dead. Not dead like Amira is, with empty eyes and a silent heart, a puppet moved by its master with Dark invisible strings. She's dead like a tree, still giving the illusion of life with nothing at the core but rot and creeping worms. The worms killed the tree, and are still hiding in the bark.

Ginny Weasley is dead, and the Heir walks wearing her face.

So Wynstella makes herself little, quiet and unnoticeable, and follows her.

The entrance of the Chamber of Secrets is in Myrtle's bathroom.

Why is it there? Why did Salazar Slytherin put the entrance of his Chamber in the girls bathroom?

Focus. That's irrelevant.

(Maybe Slytherin was like Lockhart. Would the other three have noticed? No adult noticed Lockhart yet.)

She's going to need parsletongue.

She's going to need Lakshmi.

(Maybe she could teach her how to talk to snakes.)

\---

Lakshmi is having a staring contest with a ghost.

At least, Moaning Myrtle isn't crying or being dramatic. She's glaring back at Lakshmi, until they break eye contact, and then begins to chatter friendly about the people coming in her bathroom. They seem to be friends now. Wynstella thinks she must have missed something, but isn't sure what.

This is weird.

Also, why did the Gryffindor Three think it was a good idea to brew a complex potion in a regularly flooded bathroom? 

(Lee was with them. It still hurt.)

Didn't any of them research the dangers of potion contamination?

(Well, Granger certainly knows them now.)

(She hates that she thought that.)

(She hates EVERYTHING.)

(She especially hates the letters she gets every days, perfectly written in a hand that never falters, with words that reeks of Aunt Aglaeca's game, with the name Ami scribbled at the bottom.)


	8. The Heir

It's Lakshmi who found them, and Lakshmi who came warn Wynstella as soon as the teachers let her go.

(Why did they keep her for so long? Because she's a muggleborn, and therefore doesn't have any political importance?)

(Why didn't they keep her longer? Because she's a muggleborn, and it's unlikely that she's the Heir?)

Lee and Granger. Granger and Lee.

The Heir got them. The Heir got them, turned them to stone, stole a part of their life.

And Wynstella, Wynstella is angry. Wynstella is always angry now, angry and afraid and full of hatred, like a dark pond in the pit of her guts. But this new anger is too much, and the pond floods.

In hindsight, it's a miracle things didn't go wrong.

She had her wand, and Shanks, and Lakshmi who spoke parsletongue, and she knew where the Chamber was. So there she went.

Lakshmi opened the Chamber, and both girls went down the slide. The ground where they landed was covered in little bones, but Wynstella was to angry to care for their cracking.

They reached a half-flooded room, with the gigantic statue of a bearded man against the wall facing the entrance.

"Hide behind the statue, and use your tie as a blindfold."

Wynstella waited for Lakshmi to obey, and then put her own tie over her eyes. She sat gingerly and stayed there, listening.

The Heir took their time to come. But finally, The Heir stepped in the room.

What followed is a bit of a blur. Parsletongue in the Heir's voice, stone cracking behind her, something huge sliding against it, parsletongue in Lakshmi's voice, stone cracking again and the Heir shouting in anger, and Lakshmi's voice screaming the basilisk is dead.

Wynstella ripped off her tie, and focused on the Heir. They were holding some kind of book, and she could feel the heart of the parasit that stole the girl's body beating inside.

The Heir's attention was on the basilisk's head, crushed in Slytherin's mouth, and Wynstella, Wynstella didn't stop to think.

She grabbed the book, and threw it at Lakshmi, shouting.

"Destroy it!"

And Lakshmi caught the book in one hand while the other ripped a fang out of the snake's mouth.

The Heir screamed, and even if the room was cold and there were no flames, Wynstella could feel them burn.

What was left of Ginny Weasley fell on the ground. It was still breathing. It wasn't the Heir, but there wasn't enough of Ginny's left to be her.

The Dark was almost all gone, and her eyed were not empty like Ami's.

It was breathing.

Wynstella decided to give it a chance.


	9. Aglaeca

Wynstella doesn't tell what happened in the Chamber to anyone. Neither does Lakshmi. Neither does Not-Ginny.

Well. Lakshmi can't tell, not without outing herself as a parslemouth, and Not-Ginny risks even more, so.

Wynstella tells no one, and goes back to her schoolwork. Now that she's not looking for the Heir, she has more time. She spends at least an hour every day praticing throwing, because she got lucky with the book, and it does no good leaving such things to luck.

They got lucky with the Basilisk, too. Apparently, the Heir told the statue of Slytherin to speak and the Beast began to come out of its mouth, so Lakshmi told the statue to be silent and it closed its mouth and crushed the Basilisk.

This girl deserves an Order of Merlin. She killed a monster by getting it chewed by a giant statue.

Speaking of monster. The poison she's feeding Lockhart is slowly, slowly making effect, and the staff is nonethewiser.

Wynstella taught herself to brew this poison with another target in mind, but two death using it in succession would risks attracting unwanted attention.

She'll have to find another way to kill Aglaeca.

(She's planning a murder and she's killing a man and she already killed one and what is wrong with her what kind of monster is she turning into-)

She pets Shanks. The prefects tried to tell her to leave him in the owlery, but she just stared at them blankly until they began to look unsettled, and ignored them. Staring blankly at people was very unsettling, it seems, and unsettled people avoids getting in your way.

Being crazy is a mighty weapon.

Wynstella wonders when Lee will be awaken. If the Stone they stole last year healed her sister's back.

(If they could be friends again.)

Last year, with Lee and the Gryffindor Three, they faced Voldemort and won.

With Lakshmi, she killed the Heir of Slytherin.

Lakshmi killed the Basilisk.

She's killing Lockhart.

In a way, Lockhart is worse than Aglaeca, even if she's more dangerous.

She's not worse than a basilisk.

She's not worse than the Heir of Slytherin.

She's not worse than Voldemort.

Wynstella can get rid of her.

(She can be friend with Lee again.)


	10. Nevra

Not-Ginny comes to talk with Wynstella three weeks after her creation.

"You know what I am."

Wynstella puts another instect in a glass jar. Later, she will sort through them and pick them apart for potion ingredients. For now, this is both a power game and a way to assert her weirdness.

(Not-Ginny is the one who came to talk. Let it bet on Wynstella's terms.)

(Being crazy is a mighty weapon.)

"I don't know what you are. I know what you are not."

She puts a worm in another jar. These are useful, too.

"What I'm not?  
\- You are not the Heir of Slytherin."

She picks another worm.

"You are not Ginny Weasley. "

Not-Ginny tenses.

"You didn't try to kill me.  
\- You didn't do anything wrong. Not yet, at least."

Not-Ginny puts a worm in the worm jar.

"They all call me 'Ginny'. I have her face and her body, and when people look at me they see her and they call me by her name, and I hate it, I hate it, I hate it so much..."

Not-Ginny, to Wynstella's horror, seems about to cry.

"Ask them to call you something else.  
\- That would be suspicious.  
\- Not necessarily."

Insect. Straight in the insect jar.

"What do you mean?  
\- 'Ginny' is a diminutive, right?"

Not-Ginny nods.

"It's short for 'Ginevra'.  
\- Tell them that Ginny was the name of a little girl, and you're not this girl anymore. That you grew up.  
\- She hated the name Ginevra. And it's still her name.  
\- Nevra, then. It sounds like it's short for Ginevra, but isn't a name she ever wore."

Not-Ginny meditates the name, and nods firmly.

"Nevra. Nevra Weasley."

Nevra smiles.

"I can live with that."


	11. Odgen & Blishen

The day Lockhart finally dies, Lakshmi finds Wynstella crying in a closet, a letter from Ami opens in her lap.

(She's not sure if she cries for what she did or for Ami's empty eyes.)

Lakshmi doesn't talk. She just drags Wynstella to the Chamber and takes a bottle of Firewhiskey in her schoolbag.

Nevra joins them halfway through the bottle and they get drunk in the dark, kneeling amongst squeletons, under the Basilisk roting corpse and Slytherin's unyielding gaze.

They regret it in the morning. They regret it so, so very much, that they all swear to themselves never to do that again. Nothing is worth that headache. And that dry mouth. And that nausea.

(Why do people do that to themselves?)

"Owwwww my heaaaad... Lakshmi, where did you find this? "

Lakshmi, head buried between her knees, doesn't even spare Nevra a glance.

"A woman must keeps her secrets.  
\- You're not, owwwww, you're not a woman yet.  
\- Well I will be, so I have to practice."

("Practice makes perfect, Wynstella. Do it again.")

(The ink was red, Red, RED. The ink was red and it wasn't ink.)

"I hate my aunt.  
\- The one who killed Amira?"

Wynstella freezes.

"How..."

She swallows. 

"How do you know?  
\- You told uuuuuus. Owwwww, is that a hangover? Do any of you know how to cure hangover?"

Something in Wynstella relaxes at Nevra's dismissal. She doesn't feel ready to talk about Aunt Aglaeca yet. She needs a plan first.

(Drunk-Wynstella seems to disagree, but her opinion is dismissed on account of her being drunk.)

(And even if she weren't, it would be dismissed on account of Wynstella's earlier decision to never get drunk ever again.)

"Coffee is good, I think."

Wynstella stares at Lakshmi, unable to grasps her words.

"What's coffee?"

Apparently, Lakshmi is already starting to feel better, because she's finally taking her head out of between her legs.

She winces, and, okay, maybe she's just appalled by Wynstella's question.

"You. You don't know what. _Coffee_. Is. What the fuck, Wynstella?  
\- Err..."

Nevra comes to her rescue.

"The wizarding world doesn't have coffee. Or, at least, not in wizarding UK."

Lakshmi stares at them, and puts her head back between her legs.

"Well, if Plan A doesn't work, I know what Plan B will be.  
\- What's, ow, what's Plan A? Assuming that Plan B is to introduce wizarding UK to coffee?  
\- Introducing wizarding UK to movies."

Wynstella starts to relax, the conversation appearing to steer away from Aglaeca. 

(Something feels wrong, nagging in the back of her mind.)

"Nevra?  
\- Hm?  
\- How do you know what coffee is?"

Nevra freezes.


	12. Tom Marvolo Riddle

Tom Marvolo Riddle.

Lord Voldemort.

Horcruxes.

Things are swirling in Wynstella's head, and the feeling of sickness in her guts has nothing to do with Odgen's old.

Who does that? _Who does that?_

Oh Merlin, what does this make _ _ _ __Nevra_____?

 ______"______ You're not Voldemort."

Nevra faces them with something desesperate, something pleading on her face, and Wynstella's stomach settles, because Lakshmi is right.

"I don't think Voldemort ever got drunk with a muggleborn. Did he?  
\- ... No. As far as I know, no.  
\- It's settled, then. You told it yourself, you're not Ginny Weasley anymore. I think Lakshmi is right and that's the same with the Dark Lord: You. Are not. Tom Riddle. You're Nevra."

(The relief on Nevra's face twists her stomach, and Wynstella wonders if that's what she looked like last year, when Lee asked if they could be friends.)

Nevra gives them a smile, and neither Wynstella nor Lakshmi say anything about its shakiness.

Tom Riddle is dead.

(In a way, Tom Riddle died, and left place to Voldemort, the day he teared his soul apart for the first time. Some things destroy you, no matter how far you were already gone and how much you wished for them.)

(In a way, Tom Riddle died, and left place to Voldemort, the day he teared his soul apart for the first time. In another, the rest of the soul may have been mutilated beyond recognition, but what remained of the boy had still been left in the diary until Lakshmi destroyed it.)

(Either way, Tom Marvolo Riddle is _dead_.)


	13. Shanks II

Firewhiskey may have calmed her for a night, but sleep doesn't come the following night, or the night after. She lays awake, thoughts of Lockhart and Amira and Ginny turning in her head.

When she finally falls asleep, she wakes up, shaking, from a dream where Lockhart and Amira and Ginny smile and laught, but their eyes are Ami's, black and empty.

She needs it to stop.

(It hurts so much.)

It's _suspiscious_ , that she starts to have nightmares and insomnia just after Lockhart's death, and with everyone on edge because of the Heir of Slytherin, someone is bound to notice.

(The Heir is dead and his monster is slained, but they don't know that.)

But no matter what Wynstella does, restful sleep doesn't come.

\---

Wynstella finally breaks down in the owlery.

She has a letter from Ami, and she _can't_ , she just _can't_. So she hides in the owlery and cries her heart out.

Shanks hops in her lap, and he's warm and his feathers are soft, and Wynstella hugs him until she feels better.

(She can feel his bones under his skin, so frails, and tries very hard how easy it would be to break them.)

And in the end, she does feel a bit better.


	14. Wynstella Lestrange

Shanks stays with Wynstella.

At first, it doesn't go well. Teachers don't want to see a crow in the dorms or their classroom, and lets it be known by taking house points and giving detentions.

(Wynstella doesn't care for house points, and Shanks is worth the detentions. And it's not like if she had friends in Hufflepuff in the first place anyway.)

(It's not like if the detentions were with Lockhart.)

(Or like if their punishment where anywhere as... _Creative_ as Aglaeca's.)

(She's half Black on her mother's side. She's still on the fence concerning the Black madness, but she definitively inherited their stubborn streak.)

They get used to it.

(She's quite proud of it, if she's honest with herself. It's a victory. She has few enough of them to cling to even the tiniest ones.)

(Moreover, it's a victory for which no blood was shed. They're even rarer, and all the more valuable.)

\---

Wynstella and Lee don't reconcile.

Wynstella tried, once the girl awoken, but to no avail. Lee didn't even listen, still too mad about what she said at the beginning of the year.

It

(Hurts)

's only fair, really.

(Still.)

First Amira, and then Lee. That's two friends now, that Wynstella lost to her aunt's mind games and her own mistakes.

This time, when Wynstella joins her aunt at King's Cross, she knows the rules and is playing to win.


End file.
